The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Written by Laurie R. King

Book #1 in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series

A retired detective and his young apprentice face a deadly, motive-less adversary.

4.0 Goodreads · 89,696 ratings

384 pages· 1010L

$12.00Save 7%

In stock. Also at Amazon or Bookshop.

Bookroo's summary

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes, retired and studying bees, meets Mary Russell, a sharp-minded young woman. Under his guidance, she tackles a case of mysterious illness and a senator's daughter's kidnapping. But when bombs target their homes, they pursue a cunning murderer with no apparent motive, threatening to end their partnership—and their lives. Can they unravel the mystery before it's too late?

From the publisher

In 1915, long since retired from his crime-fighting days, Sherlock Holmes is engaged in a reclusive study of honeybees on the Sussex Downs. Never did the Victorian detective think to meet an intellect matching his own- until his acquaintance with Miss Mary Russell, a young twentieth-century lady whose mental acuity is equaled only by her penchant for deduction, disguises, and danger. Under Holmes’ s reluctant tutelage, Russell embarks on a case involving a landowner’ s mysterious fever and the kidnapping of an American senator’ s daughter in the wilds of Wales. Then a near-fatal bomb on her doorstep- and another on Holmes’ s- sends the two sleuths on the trail of a murderer who scatters bizarre clues and seems utterly without motive. The villain’ s objective, however, is quite unequivocal: to end Russell and Holmes’ s partnership- and then their lives.

At a glance